5.  The applicant company is a multimedia publishing house which was established under the laws of Slovakia in 1999. It is constituted as a joint‑stock company and its head office is in Bratislava.
6.  Its legal predecessor in respect of the events giving rise to the present application was a limited-liability company established under the laws of Slovakia in 1994 and registered in Bratislava. The latter company was the publisher of a popular daily newspaper, Nový Čas, which has national coverage and was later acknowledged by the courts to be one of the most widely read newspapers in Slovakia.
7.  In the course of the proceedings described below, in 2004, the applicant company’s legal predecessor was merged with the applicant company. Hereinafter “the applicant company” includes the applicant company’s legal predecessor.
8.  In the evening of an unspecified day in 2001 an accident happened in a car park in a district capital in north-eastern Slovakia. It involved a collision between a car, driven by A., and a pedestrian, B.
9.  Shortly after the accident B. succumbed to his injuries and A. was arrested and detained on charges related to the accident.
10.  B.’s father, C., was a chief prosecutor with the District Office of the Public Prosecution Service (“the PPS”) in the same district. In this capacity, his full name is accessible to the public via the official Internet site of the PPS.
11.  Following the accident, a reporter with Nový Čas, D., contacted C. and asked him for a comment. C. gave him a short statement. The question of disclosure of his and his son’s identity was not discussed.
12.  On 24 October 2001 the applicant company published an article in Nový Čas, written by D., concerning the accident. The title of the article was:
‘The [PPS] and the courts violate the human rights of a driver who is being prosecuted for running over a son of the [chief] District Prosecutor of [a town].’
The article also had a subtitle, which read:
‘The investigation file travels around the region like a hot potato’.
13.  The article referred to B. and C. by their full names, while A. was referred to by his first name and the initial of his surname. In its first part, the article described the accident.
14.  The subsequent part, referring to the handling of the case file concerning the accident and giving the positions of those concerned, with contextual explanations, contains, inter alia, the following passages:
“... The case in north-eastern Slovakia has become the centre of an unprecedented merry-go-round of files being pushed around from the [PPS] to the courts and back ...
‘My wife and I, we have lost the meaning of our lives’, the district prosecutor [C.], devastated by the loss of his son’ said in a short interview for our daily ....”
15.  The third and final part of the article deals with the circumstances of the investigation and A.’s detention, in the following terms:
“[A.] has been charged by an investigator and remanded in custody by a judge of the [a city] District Court. If he is found guilty, he risks being jailed for up to five years.
After one month the defence lawyer for A. requested that he be released on bail. Then the transferring of the file from one institution to another started. From the regional prosecutor to the [a town] District Court, and from there to [a town] and back to the prosecutor. The judges of the [a town] District Court pronounced themselves biased and the case was transferred to the [a town] Regional Court. The latter assigned it to the [a town] District Court last Thursday.
We are not advocating the release of the accused from detention, but we point out the disproportionate time it is taking to determine the request.
Towards the end of last week our daily notified the suspicion of a human-rights violation to the Minister of Justice. On the basis of a written reply of the Minister we conclude that none of his co-workers has obtained detailed information about the case. The Minister [name] has also been addressed by the girlfriend of [A.]. ‘I have not received any answer from the Minister, not even a few lines’, the young lady told our daily. ‘Only after the [daily] started taking interest in the case did I receive an answer from the Justice Ministry, which told me to approach the Office of the Prosecutor General’, added the young lady.
When examining complaints, the European Court of Human Rights emphasises that in dealing with requests for release from pre-trial detention the courts must act promptly. It is known that in similar cases a period of several months has been considered by Strasbourg to be a violation of the citizens’ rights.”
16.  On an unspecified date, presumably in 2003, C. sued the applicant company for libel. He submitted that, more than two months after the death of B., at a time when he and his wife were slowly recovering from the tragedy, he had been visited at home by D. The latter had asked C. and his wife for their comments. C. had been unable to speak and had limited himself to three sentences. There had been no talk of disclosing the full names of B. and C. He considered the affair to be a highly private matter. Moreover, after the article was published, acquaintances of C., who had not been aware of the tragedy, had started calling C. with condolences and thus reopening an old wound.
17.  In terms of redress, C. sought an order for publication of an apology, specifically for the disclosure of the full names of B. and himself, and the equivalent of some 4,800 euros (EUR) by way of damages.
18.  In its defence, the applicant company submitted that the aim of the article had been to criticise the actions of the courts and the PPS in the region concerned, because they had constituted a violation of the human rights of A. Furthermore, it argued that both B. and C. were to be considered public personalities in terms of law, and that as such a higher degree of interference with their personal integrity was acceptable. As regards the public status of B., relying on legal texts, the applicant company submitted that it stemmed from the mere fact of being a victim of a crime. For C. public status stemmed from his being a public official.
19.  When questioned as a witness, D. submitted that the article was not directed against C., although he had originally wanted to suggest in the article that the state of affairs might have been indirectly influenced by C. As C. was a lawyer and had a university degree, D. had assumed that the question of disclosing the full names was clear and pointed out that neither during the short interview nor after it, nor at any time before the publication of the article, did C. present any objections in that respect. As C. was a public official, in D.’s opinion he had to accept a higher degree of interference with his personal integrity. In D.’s view it was common for the daily to write about public officials and their children and to disclose their full names without receiving any complaints.
20.  On 2 February 2005 a District Court (Okresný súd) in the given district allowed the action by ordering an apology and a payment of 100,000 Slovak korunas (SKK) in damages. Converted at the rate applicable on that day, this amount is equivalent to some 2,600 euros (EUR). The applicant company was also ordered to pay costs. The remainder of the claim for damages was dismissed.
21.  The District Court acknowledged that C. was a public official and that as such he had to accept a higher degree of interference with his privacy. However, the accident had no link to his public functions and was therefore exempted from that rule.
The crux of the case was precisely the giving away of the full names of the plaintiff and his son, which was reflected in the language of the apology to be published by the applicant company, as ordered by the District Court.
As regards the extent of the wrongful interference with the claimant’s personal integrity, the District Court observed that the article related to a great tragedy in the claimant’s family, that it had been published around the time when the family had begun dealing with their grief; and that following the appearance of the article acquaintances of C. who had not known about the tragedy had started contacting the claimant with condolences, which had reopened the wound.
22.  The applicant company appealed (odvolanie), arguing, inter alia, that the District Court had taken no position as to its claim that B. too had become a public figure by the mere fact of being a victim of a crime and that the District Court had focused solely on one side of the affair – the protection of the claimant’s personal integrity – completely ignoring the other side – the applicant company’s right to freedom of expression. The press could not be denied the right to report on criminal proceedings and it could not be ruled out that, in the specific circumstances of the present case, the delays in the criminal proceedings discussed in the impugned article had something to do with the position of the claimant. In addition, it should have been taken into account that, as he was a Chief District Prosecutor, the claimant’s name was publicly accessible on the official Internet page of the PPS (see paragraph 10 above).
The applicant company supported its line of argument with detailed references to the Court’s case-law.
23.  On 17 January 2007 a Regional Court (Krajský súd) in the given region determined the appeal by upholding the District Court’s judgment in respect of the order for an apology. At the same time, it overturned the contested judgment in respect of the order for the payment of damages.
24.  The Regional Court concurred with the District Court’s conclusions as to the pivotal point of the case, that is to say the question of interference with the claimant’s personal integrity. It took as established that the aim of the article had been to point out a violation of the human rights of A.
However, the description of the circumstances of the accident and the disclosure of the full names of the claimant and his late son without the former’s authorisation, together constituted an unlawful interference with the claimant’s personal integrity.
The Regional Court also held that, although not relevant to the question of the lawfulness of the interference with the claimant’s personal integrity as such, his public function had to be taken into account in connection with the scope of the relief to be granted.
Bearing this in mind, the Regional Court found that an order for an apology was sufficient and there was no call for payment of damages.
25.  While the ruling on damages was contested in a separate procedure described below, the ruling on an apology became final and binding.
26.  Nevertheless, on 10 May 2007 the applicant company challenged it by way of a complaint to the Constitutional Court (Ústavný súd) under Article 127 of the Constitution. In it, the applicant company cited, inter alia, Articles 6 and 10 of the Convention, and reiterated and developed its previous arguments, focusing on the contention that the courts’ conclusions as to the interference with the claimant’s personal integrity had been made without taking into account any considerations of proportionality, that these conclusions had not therefore been based on an acceptable assessment of the relevant facts, and that the applicant company’s arguments in that respect had been completely ignored.
27.  The disclosure of the names of B. and C. could not in itself be considered as concerning their personal lives, all the more so as they had been affected by actions that were investigated as a criminal offence, and that in the proceedings concerning that offence there had been a suspicion of a violation of another individual’s fundamental rights.
In that respect, connections and solidarity among the prosecuting authorities were not to be underestimated. It was therefore necessary, in the given circumstances, and in the interest of providing complete and objective information, to disclose the names of B. and C.
28.  It was not relevant whether C. had in fact interfered with the prosecuting authorities. The press, as a public watchdog, had the right to express publicly doubts as to the impartial exercise of public power and to report on matters giving rise to such doubts.
29.  The procedural conduct of C. in the context of his libel action suggested that if his and B.’s full names had not been disclosed no action in libel would have been brought. C.’s name was in the public domain in any case (see paragraph 10 above).
30.  On 18 September 2008 the Constitutional Court declared the complaint inadmissible. It found no constitutionally relevant arbitrariness, unlawfulness, deficiency or irregularity in the courts’ reasoning, and reiterated its established case-law, pursuant to which a general court could not bear “secondary liability” for a violation of fundamental rights and freedoms of a substantive nature, unless there had been a violation of procedural rules. As no violation of any procedural rule had been established, there could not have been a violation of any substantive right either.
The decision was served on the applicant company on 15 October 2008.
31.  On 26 September 2007, following an appeal on points of law (dovolanie) by C., the Supreme Court (Najvyšší súd) quashed the Regional Court’s ruling of 17 January 2007 concerning damages (see paragraph 23 above), on the ground that the Regional Court had failed to support it with adequate reasoning.
32.  The applicant company’s appeal against the ruling on damages thus fell to be determined by the Regional Court once again.
33.  On 19 May 2008 the Regional Court ruled on the claim for damages anew, upholding the District Court’s order (see paragraph 20 above).
It considered the amount of the damages appropriate, noting that the article concerned a great tragedy in the claimant’s family, the fact that by disclosing the full names of B. and C. the article had allowed for total identification of the claimant, and the fact that the paper was one of the most widely read papers in Slovakia. Without providing any details, the Regional Court also took into account the consequences of the article.
34.  The applicant company challenged the judgment of 19 May 2008 by way of an appeal on points of law of its own. It argued that the Regional Court had failed adequately to address a great part of the applicant company’s relevant arguments. In particular, the Regional Court had failed to take into account that the published information was true, that the applicant company’s bona fides had not been disputed, that there was no suggestion that C. had been involved in any wrongdoing, that the published information concerned a matter of public interest, and that the amount of the awarded damages was as high as one-third of the maximum amount of indemnity payable by the State to victims of violent criminal offences under the relevant legislation. In other words, the Regional Court had completely failed to weigh the rights and justified interests of the applicant company in exercising its freedom of expression against the rights and interests of the claimant in having his privacy protected. Furthermore, the Regional Court’s conclusions lacked an evidence basis.
The applicant company argued that as a result it had been “prevented from acting before the court”, which constituted an admissibility ground for its appeal under Article 237 (f) of the Code of Civil Procedure (Law no. 99/1963 Coll., as amended).
35.  On 24 February 2009 the Supreme Court declared the appeal inadmissible, observing that such an appeal was an extraordinary remedy against rulings that – after the exhaustion of an ordinary appeal – had become final and binding. The applicant company’s right to have the contested ruling properly reasoned had thus to be weighed against the general interest in legal certainty. From that perspective, and considering the Regional Court’s judgment as a whole, there was nothing to suggest that the applicant company had in fact been prevented from acting before the court in terms of the admissibility ground concerned.
No further appeal was available.
36.  Meanwhile, and in parallel to its above-mentioned appeal on points of law, the applicant company had also lodged another constitutional complaint. It relied again, inter alia, on Articles 6 and 10 of the Convention and challenged the ruling on the damages, as contained in the judgments of 2 February 2005 and 19 May 2008 (see paragraphs 20, 21 and 33 above). It reiterated its previous arguments, and contended that none of the courts involved had given an adequate answer to them.
37.  On 9 April 2009 the Constitutional Court declared the complaint inadmissible. It observed that on the present complaint it could only examine the rulings and the reasons behind them as far as the damages were concerned. From that perspective the judgments of 2 February 2005 and 19 May 2008 had to be taken together and, as such, displayed no constitutionally relevant deficiency.